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Move over nanotubes, there's a new futuristic building material
in town and its origins may surprise you.

Developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT), human bone is the inspiration behind the latest
high-tech composite, which can be made in just a few hours using
a 3D printer.

The new material — which is lauded for its durability, low
density and environmentally sustainable constituents — gets its
strength from its bone-like structure. Real bones have a complex
hierarchical structure thanks to their two main building blocks,
collagen protein and hydroxyapatite minerals.

MIT's new material replicates this hierarchical pattern, which is
produced in bones with the help of electrochemical reactions.
Such reactions are difficult to reproduce in a lab, but with a
3D printer, the researchers were able to replicate the
fracture-resistant structure.

Under a microscope, the synthetic material the researchers
created looks like a staggered brick-and-mortar wall. A soft
black polymer serves as the mortar, simulating the work of
collagen, bone's yielding cushion. A stiff blue polymer forms the
bricks, behaving like hydroxyapatite, bone's strong but brittle
frame.

And just as collagen and hydroxyapatite help a bone withstand
fracturing by dissipating energy and distributing damage over a
larger area, so too does the lab-made material. In fact, the
material may prove to be even
stronger than bone.

"The geometric patterns we used in the synthetic materials are
based on those seen in natural materials like bone or nacre, but
also include new designs that do not exist in nature," said
Markus Buehler, lead researcher in the study.

"As engineers, we are no longer limited to the natural patterns.
We can design our own, which may perform even better than the
ones that already exist."

The 3D-printed bone material is 22 times more fracture-resistant
than any of its constituent parts, an impressive ratio for a
lab-made composite.

Researchers suggest that the process of 3D printing super-strong
metamaterials is both entirely possible and more
cost-effective than traditional methods of manufacturing. Buehler
hopes that one day, optimized materials like the one created in
MIT's lab will form the basis of entire buildings.

"The possibilities seem endless," he said, "As we are just
beginning to push the limits of the kind of geometric features
and material combinations we can print."